H. L. Mencken Quotes About Originality

• The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

  H. L. Mencken

  Education, Learning, Liberty

  The American Mercury Magazine, April 24, 1924.

• [The] erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardised citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

  H. L. Mencken

  Knowledge, Independent, Science

• It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Quality

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.87, Cosimo, Inc.

• All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: it's one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him... One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Essence, Originality

  "Prejudices: Third Series (Le Contrat Social)". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1922.

• A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

  H. L. Mencken

  Society, Original Thought, Literature

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.20, Knopf

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